Question:

What are the deadlines for responding to Chinese office actions? For example, if the first office action was issued on August 4, 2014, when would the response be due?

Answer:

The response period is four months for the first office action and two months for the second, third and subsequent office actions. It runs from the date on which the document is presumed to have been received.

Presumed receipt is the 15th day after the issue date stated in the upper-right corner of the office action. For example, an initial office action issued by SIPO on August 4, 2014 is presumed received on August 19, 2014, and the response is due on December 19, 2014.

Calculation: Deadline for the first office action = issue date + 15 days + 4 months. Deadline for the second and subsequent office actions = issue date + 15 days + 2 months.

Note 1: The first day of a period is not counted. A period expressed in years or months expires on the corresponding day in the final month. If there is no corresponding day, it expires on that month’s last day. Thus, for a second office action issued on December 16, 2013, presumed receipt is December 31, 2013, and the response deadline is February 28, 2014.

Note 2: If the deadline falls on an official holiday or an adjusted weekly holiday, it moves to the first working day thereafter. If that first working day is a weekly holiday, the deadline is postponed to the following Monday.